With Christianity in decline after having once been central and integral to Canadian culture and daily life,[9] Canada has become a post-Christian, secular state.[10][11][12] The majority of Canadians consider religion to be unimportant in their daily lives,[13] but still believe in God.[14] The practice of religion is now generally considered a private matter throughout society and the state.[15]

Christmas and Easter are nationwide holidays, and while Jews, Muslims, and other religious groups are allowed to take their holy days off work, they do not share the same official recognition.[24] In 1957, the Parliament declared Thanksgiving "a day of general thanksgiving to almighty God for the bountiful harvest with which Canada has been blessed."[25]

In recent years there have been substantial rises in non-Christian religions in Canada. From the 1991 to 2011, Islam grew by 316%, Hinduism 217%, Sikhism 209%, and Buddhism 124%. The growth of non-Christian religions expressed as a percentage of Canada's population rose from 4% in 1991 to 8% in 2011. In terms of the ratio of non-Christians to Christians, it rose from 21 Christians (95% of religious population) to 1 non-Christian (5% of religious population) in 1991 to 8 Christians (89%) to 1 non-Christian (11%) in 2011, a rise of 135% of the ratio of non-Christians to Christians, or a decline of 6.5% of Christians to non-Christians, in 20 years.

1For comparability purposes, 1991 data are presented according to 2001 boundaries.2The 2011 data is from the National Household Survey<[1] and so numbers are estimates.3Includes persons who report only “Protestant”.4Includes persons who report “Christian”, and those who report “Apostolic”, “Born-again Christian” and “Evangelical”.

While Anglicans consolidated their hold on the upper classes, workingmen and farmers responded to the Methodist revivals, often sponsored by visiting preachers from the United States. Typical was Rev. James Caughey, an American sent by the Wesleyan Methodist Church from the 1840s through 1864. He brought in the converts by the score, most notably in the revivals in Western Canada from 1851 to 1853. His technique combined restrained emotionalism with a clear call for personal commitment, coupled with follow-up action to organize support from converts. It was a time when the holiness movement caught fire, with the revitalized interest of men and women in Christian perfection. Caughey successfully bridged the gap between the style of earlier camp meetings and the needs of more sophisticated Methodist congregations in the emerging cities.[47]

In Lower Canada, the Roman Catholic Church was officially pre-eminent and had a central role in the colony's culture and politics. Unlike English Canada, French Canadiannationalism became very closely associated with Roman Catholicism.[49] During this period, the Roman Catholic Church in the region became one of the most reactionary in the world. Known as Ultramontane Catholicism, the church adopted positions condemning all manifestations of liberalism.[50]

In politics, those aligned with the Roman Catholic clergy in Quebec were known as les bleus (the blues). They formed a curious alliance with the staunchly monarchist and pro-British Anglicans of English Canada (often members of the Orange Order) to form the basis of the Canadian Conservative Party. The Reform Party, which later became the Liberal Party, was largely composed of the anti-clerical French Canadians, known as les rouges (the reds) and the non-Anglican Protestant groups. In those times, right before elections, parish priests would give sermons to their flock where they said things like Le ciel est bleu et l'enfer est rouge ("Heaven/the sky is blue and hell is red").

By the late nineteenth century, Protestant pluralism had taken hold in English Canada. While much of the elite were still Anglican, other groups had become very prominent as well. Toronto had become home to the world's single largest Methodist community and it became known as the "Methodist Rome". The schools and universities created at this time reflected this pluralism with major centres of learning being established for each faith. One, King's College, later the University of Toronto, was set up as a non-denominational school. The influence of the Orange Order was strong, especially among Irish Protestant immigrants, and comprised a powerful anti-Catholic force in Ontario politics; its influence faded away after 1920.[51]

The late nineteenth century also saw the beginning of a large shift in Canadian immigration patterns. Large numbers of Irish and Southern European immigrants were creating new Roman Catholic communities in English Canada. Western Canada saw the arrival of significant Eastern Orthodox immigrants from Eastern Europe as well as Mormon and Pentecostal immigrants from the United States and Ireland.

As of 1931, Roman Catholics were the largest religious body in Canada, with 4 million people. Following it were the United Church of Canada (including Methodists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians), with 2 million; the Anglican Church, with nearly 2 million; and the Presbyterian Church, with approximately 870,000. The Canada Year Book 1936 reported that “of the non-Christian sects, 155,614 or 1.50% were Jews, 24,087 or 0.23% were Confucians, 15,784 or 0.15% were Buddhists and 5,008 or 0.05% were pagans.[54]

Domination of Canadian society by Protestant and Roman Catholic elements continued until well into the 20th century. Until the 1960s, most parts of Canada still had extensive Lord's Day laws that limited what one could do on a Sunday.[55] The English Canadian elite were still dominated by Protestants, and Jews and Roman Catholics were often excluded.[56] A slow process of liberalization began after the Second World War in English Canada. Overtly Christian laws were expunged, including those against homosexuality. Policies favouring Christian immigration were also abolished.[57]

The most overwhelming change occurred during the Quiet Revolution in Quebec in the 1960s. Up to the 1950s, the province was one of the most traditional Roman Catholic areas in the world. Church attendance rates were high, and the schools were largely controlled by the Church. In the 1960s, the Catholic Church lost most of its influence in Quebec, and religiosity declined sharply.[58] While the majority of Québécois are still professed Latin rite Roman Catholics, rates of church attendance have decreased dramatically.[59] Since then, Common law relationships, abortion, and support for same-sex marriage are more common in Quebec than in the rest of Canada.

Inauguration of United Church at Mutual Street Arena, Toronto, on June 10, 1925

English Canada also underwent secularization. The United Church of Canada, the country's largest Protestant denomination, became one of the most liberal major Protestant churches in the world. Flatt argues that in the 1960s Canada's rapid cultural changes led the United Church to end its evangelical programs and change its identity. It made revolutionary changes in its evangelistic campaigns, educational programs, moral stances, and theological image. However, membership declined sharply as the United Church affirmed a commitment to gay rights including marriage and ordination, and to the ordination of women.[60][61]

Meanwhile, a strong current of evangelical Protestantism emerged. The largest groups are found in the Atlantic provinces and Western Canada, particularly in Alberta, Southern Manitoba and the Southern interior and Fraser Valley region of British Columbia, also known as the "Canadian Bible Belt", as well as parts of Ontario outside the Greater Toronto Area. The social environment is more conservative, somewhat more in line with that of the Midwestern and Southern United States, and same-sex marriage, abortion, and common-law relationships are less widely accepted. This movement has grown sharply after 1960. The evangelicals increasingly influence public policy. Nevertheless, the overall proportion of evangelicals in Canada remains considerably lower than in the United States and the polarization much less intense. There are very few evangelicals in Quebec and in the largest urban areas, which are generally secular, although there are several congregations above 1000 members in most large cities.[62]

The Canadian community is one of the earliest western communities of Bahá'ís, at one point sharing a joint National Spiritual Assembly with the United States, and is a co-recipient of `Abdu'l-Bahá's Tablets of the Divine Plan. The first North American woman to declare herself a Bahá'í was Kate C. Ives, of Canadian ancestry, though not living in Canada at the time. Moojan Momen, in reviewing "The Origins of the Bahá'í Community of Canada, 1898–1948" notes that "the Magee family... are credited with bringing the Bahá'í Faith to Canada. Edith Magee became a Bahá'í in 1898 in Chicago and returned to her home in London, Ontario, where four other female members of her family became Bahá'ís. This predominance of women converts became a feature of the Canadian Bahá'í community..."[63]

The majority of Canadian Christians attend church services infrequently. Cross-national surveys of religiosity rates such as the Pew Global Attitudes Project indicate that, on average, Canadian Christians are less observant than those of the United States but are still more overtly religious than their counterparts in Western Europe. In 2002, 30% of Canadians reported to Pew researchers that religion was "very important" to them. A 2005 Gallup poll showed that 28% of Canadians consider religion to be "very important" (55% of Americans and 19% of Britons say the same).[64] Regional differences within Canada exist, however, with British Columbia and Quebec reporting especially low metrics of traditional religious observance, as well as a significant urban-rural divide, while Alberta and rural Ontario saw high rates of religious attendance. The rates for weekly church attendance are contested, with estimates running as low as 11% as per the latest Ipsos-Reid poll and as high as 25% as per Christianity Today magazine. This American magazine reported that three polls conducted by Focus on the Family, Time Canada and the Vanier Institute of the Family showed church attendance increasing for the first time in a generation, with weekly attendance at 25 per cent. This number is similar to the statistics reported by premier Canadian sociologist of religion, Prof. Reginald Bibby of the University of Lethbridge, who has been studying Canadian religious patterns since 1975. Although lower than in the US, which has reported weekly church attendance at about 40% since the Second World War, weekly church attendance rates are higher than those in Northern Europe.

Canada as a nation is becoming increasingly religiously diverse, especially in large urban centres such as Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, where minority groups and new immigrants who make up the growth in most religious groups congregate. Two significant trends become clear when the current religious landscape is examined closely. One is the loss of ‘secularized' Canadians as active and regular participants in the churches and denominations they grew up in, which were overwhelmingly Christian, while these churches remain a part of Canadians' cultural identity. The other is the increasing presence of ethnically diverse immigration within the religious makeup of the country.

As Mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics have experienced drastic losses over the past 30 years, others have been expanding rapidly: overall by 144% in ‘Eastern' religions during the 1981-1991 decade.[66] Considering Canada's increasing reliance on immigration to bolster a low birth rate, the situation is only likely to continue to diversify. This increased influx of ethnic immigrants not only affects the types of religions represented in the Canadian context but also the increasingly multicultural and multilingual makeup of individual Christian denominations. From ChineseAnglican or KoreanUnited Church communities, to the Lutheran focus on providing much needed services to immigrants new to the Canadian context and English language, immigration is making changes.[67]

For some Protestant denominations, adapting to a new secular context has meant adjusting to their non-institutional roles in society by increasingly focusing on social justice.[68] However the pull between conservative religious members and the more radical among the church members is complicated by the numbers of immigrant communities who may desire a church that fulfils a more ‘institutionally complete' role as a buffer in this new country over the current tension filled debates over same-sex marriage, ordination of women and homosexuals, or the role of women in the church. This of course will depend on the background of the immigrant population, as in the Hong Kong context where ordination of Florence Li Tim Oi happened long before women's ordination was ever raised on the Canadian Anglican church level.[69]

As well a multicultural focus on the churches part may include non-Christian elements (such as the inclusion of a Buddhist priest in one incident) which are unwelcome to the transplanted religious community.[70] Serving the needs and desires of different aspects of the Canadian and newly Canadian populations makes a difficult balancing act for the various mainline churches which are starved for money and active parishioners in a time when 16% of Canadians identify as non-religious and up to two-thirds of those who do identify with a denomination use the church only for its life-cycle rituals governing birth, marriage, and death.[71] The church retains that hold in their parishioners' lives but not the commitment of time and energy necessary to support an aging institution.

Evangelical portions of the Protestant groups proclaim their growth as well but as Roger O'Tool notes they make up 7% of the Canadian population and seem to gain most of their growth from a higher birthrate.[72] What is significant is the higher participation of their members in contrast to Mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. This high commitment would seem to translate into the kind of political power evangelicals in the United States enjoy but despite Canada's historically Christian background as Lori Beaman notes neatly "...[forming] the backdrop for social process"[73] explicit religiosity appears to have not effectively moved the government towards legal discrimination against gay marriage. Much as many Roman Catholics in Quebec ignore the Church's stance on birth control, abortion, or premarital sex, the churches do not dictate much of the daily lives of regular Canadians.[74]

In mid-1870s Hutterites moved from Europe to the Dakota Territory in the United States to avoid military service and other persecutions.[78] During World War I Hutterites suffered from persecutions in the United States because they are pacifist and refused military service.[79][80] They then moved almost all of their communities to Canada in the Western provinces of Alberta and Manitoba in 1918.[80] In the 1940s, there were 52 Hutterite colonies in Canada.[80]

Today, more than 75% of the world's Hutterite colonies are located in Canada, mainly in Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, the rest being almost exclusively in the United States.[81] The Hutterite population in North America is about 45,000 people.[82]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) has had a presence in Canada since its organization in New York State in 1830.[85] Canada has been used as a refuge territory by members of the LDS Church to avoid the anti-polygamy prosecutions by the United States government.[86] The first LDS Church in Canada was established in 1895 in what would become Alberta; it was the first stake of the Church to be established outside the United States.[87] The LDS Church has founded several communities in Alberta.

In 2011, the LDS Church of Canada claimed around 200,000 members; the 2011 Canadian National Household Survey calculates around 100,000.[88] It has congregations in all Canadian provinces and territories and possess at least one temple in six of the ten provinces, including the oldest LDS temple outside the United States. Alberta is the province with the most members of the LDS Church in Canada, having approximately 40% of the total of Canadian LDS Church members and representing 2% of the total population of the province (the National Household survey has Alberta with over 50% of the Canadian Mormons and 1.6% of the province's population[88]), followed by Ontario and British Columbia.[89]

The Catholic Church in Canada, under the spiritual leadership of the Pope and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, has the largest number of adherents to a religion in Canada, with 38.7% of Canadians (13.07 million) baptized as Catholics, in 72 dioceses across the provinces and territories, served by about 8,000 priests. It was the first European faith in what is now Canada, arriving in 1497 when John Cabot landed on Newfoundland and raised the Venetian and Papal banners, claiming the land for his sponsor King Henry VII of England, while recognizing the religious authority of the Roman Catholic Church.[90]

Four years after Canada's founding in 1867, the 1871 Canadian Census found 13 Muslims among the population.[91] Today, Islam is the second largest religion in Canada, practiced by 3.2% of the total population.[3] The first Canadian mosque was constructed in Edmonton in 1938, when there were approximately 700 Muslims in the country.[92] This building is now part of the museum at Fort Edmonton Park. The years after World War II saw a small increase in the Muslim population. However, Muslims were still a distinct minority. It was only with the removal of European immigration preferences in the late 1960s that Muslims began to arrive in significant numbers.

According to Canada's 2001 census, there were 579,740 Muslims in Canada, just under 2% of the population.[93] In 2006, the Muslim population was estimated to be 0.8 million or about 2.6%. In 2010, the Pew Research Centre estimated there were about 0.9 million Muslims in Canada.[94] About 65% were Sunni, while 15% were Shia.[dead link][95] Some Muslims are non-practicing.[citation needed] In the 2011 National Housing Survey, Muslims constituted 3.2% of the population[96][97] making them largest religious adherents after Christianity. Islam is the fastest growing religion in Canada.[96] Sunni Islam is followed by the majority while there are significant numbers of Shia Muslims. Ahmadiyya also has a significant proportion with more than 25,000 Ahmadis living in Canada.[98] There are also non-denominational Muslims[99]

The Jewish community in Canada is almost as old as the nation itself. The earliest documentation of Jews in Canada are British Army records from the Seven Years' War from 1754. In 1760, General Jeffrey Amherst, 1st Baron Amherst attacked and won Montreal for the British. In his regiment there were several Jews, including four among his officer corps, most notably Lieutenant Aaron Hart who is considered the father of Canadian Jewry.[102] In 1807, Ezekiel Hart was elected to the legislature of Lower Canada, becoming the first Jew in the British Empire to hold an official position. Hart was sworn in on a Hebrew Bible as opposed to a Christian Bible.[103][104] The next day an objection was raised that Hart had not taken the oath in the manner required for sitting in the assembly — an oath of abjuration, which would have required Hart to swear "on the true faith of a Christian".[105] Hart was expelled from the assembly, only to be re-elected two more times. In 1768, the first synagogue in Canada was built in Montreal, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal. In 1832, partly because of the work of Ezekiel Hart, a law was passed that guaranteed Jews the same political rights and freedoms as Christians.

The Jewish population saw a growth during the 1880s due to the pogroms of Russia and growing anti-Semitism. Between the years of 1880 and 1930 the Jewish population grew to 155,000. In 1872, Henry Nathan, Jr. became the first Jewish Member of Parliament, representing the Victoria, BC area in the newly created House of Commons. The First World War halted the flow of immigrants into Canada, and after the War there was a change in Canada's immigration policy to limit the immigration of people from "non-preferred nations", i.e., those not from the United Kingdom or otherwise White Anglo-Saxon Protestant nations. In June 1939 Canada and the United States were the last hope for 907 Jewish refugees aboard the steamship SS St. Louis which had been denied landing in Havana although the passengers had entry visas. The Canadian government ignored the protests of Canadian Jewish organizations. King said the crisis was not a "Canadian problem" and Blair added in a letter to O.D. Skelton, Undersecretary of State for External Affairs, dated June 16, 1939, "No country could open its doors wide enough to take in the hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who want to leave Europe: the line must be drawn somewhere." The ship finally had to return to Germany.[106] During the Second World War almost twenty thousand Canadian Jews volunteered to fight overseas. Nearly 40,000 Holocaust survivors moved to Canada in the late 1940s to rebuild their lives.

Today the Canadian Jewish community is the fourth largest in the world[107] and practices in both of the official languages of Canada. There is an increase in the number of people that use Hebrew, other than religious ceremonies, while there is a decline in the Yiddish language. Most of Canada's Jews live in Ontario and Quebec, with Toronto being the largest Jewish population centre. Recently, anti-Semitism has been a growing concern in Canada. In 2009, anti-Semitic incidents jumped fivefold,[108] with over 113 incidents, and some reports listing 479 in Toronto alone.[citation needed]

Hindus in Canada generally come from one of four groups. The first is primarily made up of Indianimmigrants who began arriving in British Columbia about 100 years ago and continue to immigrate today (Hindus from all over India immigrate to Canada today, but the largest Indian subgroups are the Gujaratis and Punjabis). The second major group of Hindus immigrated from Sri Lanka, going back to the 1940s, when a few hundred Sri Lankan Tamils migrated to Canada. The 1983 communal riots in Sri Lanka precipitated the mass exodus of Tamils. A third group is made up of Canadian converts to the various sects of Hinduism through the efforts of the Hare Krishna movement, the Gurus during the last 50 years, and other organizations. Finally, the small Nepalese Canadian community is mostly Hindu.

According to the 2001 Census of Canada, there were 297,200 practitioners of Hinduism.[110] However, the non-profit organization Association for Canadian Studies estimates the Hindu population grew to 372,500 by 2006, or just under 1.2% of the population of Canada. The vast majority of Hindus reside in Ontario (primarily in Toronto, Scarborough, Brampton, Hamilton, Windsor and Ottawa), Quebec (primarily around the Montreal area) and British Columbia, (primarily around the Vancouver area).[110]

There is a small, rapidly growing Buddhist community in Canada. At the 2001 census, 300,346 Canadians identified their religion as Buddhist, about 1% of the country's population.[111]

Buddhism has been practiced in Canada for more than a century and in recent years has grown dramatically. Buddhism arrived in Canada with the arrival of Chinese labourers in the territories during the 19th century.[112] Modern Buddhism in Canada traces to Japanese immigration during the late 19th century.[112] The first Japanese Buddhist temple in Canada was built at the Ishikawa Hotel in Vancouver in 1905.[113] Over time, the Japanese Jōdo Shinshū branch of Buddhism became the prevalent form of Buddhism in Canada[112] and established the largest Buddhist organization in Canada.[112]

In Neo-Druid history a notable community was the Reformed Druids of North America, one of whose four founders was Canadian, which served both the US Druid community and the Canadian Druid community. Neo-Druidism largely spread in Canada through the Ancient Order of the Druids during the 19th century.[119]

^Roger O'Toole, "Religion in Canada: Its Development and Contemporary Situation" In Lori Beaman, ed., Religion and Canadian Society: Traditions, Transitions, and Innovations. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2006), 18.

^Roger O'Toole, "Religion in Canada: Its Development and Contemporary Situation" In Lori Beaman, ed., Religion and Canadian Society: Traditions, Transitions, and Innovations. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2006), 13-14.

^Roger O'Toole, "Religion in Canada: Its Development and Contemporary Situation" In Lori Beaman, ed., Religion and Canadian Society: Traditions, Transitions, and Innovations. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2006), 17.

^Roger O'Toole, "Religion in Canada: Its Development and Contemporary Situation" In Lori Beaman, ed., Religion and Canadian Society: Traditions, Transitions, and Innovations. (Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press, 2006), 12.